Drayke Newall

I'm a little confused. Your a non-profit organisation that cant afford to pay for your sims to keep HL open, yet you have a sim that is now commercial and doesn't get the non-profit discount (I assume). Consequently you are offering parcels on this commercial sim for payment using the crowdfunding which, in essence is still running a rental business only outside of the linden exchange. Wouldn't this just mean the rental payments will only be paying for the commercial sim seeing as it is now at full tier price? or, are you charging an larger outrageous amount for the parcels to pay for the rest of the sims. If you are charging a larger amount for the parcels on the commercial sim to help support the non-profit sims doesn't this run in conflict with the ToS stating that rentals cannot help pay for non-profit discounted sims? Maybe I have misread, not understood or something but that just doesn't seem right...

Those seem to be if you are a submitting a general tax return as a worker etc., not a business tax return. If second life is your sole business and is registered as a business you can submit a tax return for a business. Like I said, in my country it could be counted as a home business (self employed) so long as you have the required business documentation etc. It also might be the same in USA, I'm not sure. If it is then you would use the following links to explain what can and cant be claimed as a business deduction from the IRS. I'm not a tax consultant for the USA so am only going by what I know in my country so if you want to do this make sure you look into "is SL activity a business" thing first as it may not be the same in USA. https://www.irs.gov/businesses/small-businesses-self-employed/deducting-business-expenses https://www.irs.gov/businesses/small-businesses-self-employed/home-office-deduction Tax issues can get really silly sometimes.

No wonder USA has such tax issues then forcing the need for such TOS agreements if you don't need justification. You cannot submit a tax return and simply say here's the receipts you have to be able to prove you can claim the deduction otherwise face getting audited. Just submitting the receipts as proof without justification for the expense is the very definition of Tax Fraud. Apologies got confused wherein the TOS it has Tilia Branch UK. didn't see the Tilia Inc. mentioned before it.

That's not necessarily money laundering or tax evasion it is being smart working within the law. It can be this for anyone carrying on a business anywhere, unless tax laws are substantially different in the USA. For example if you make an income solely off second life, at least in my country I may be able to get deductions for: Electricity internet $x deduction for using my home office depending on how long I work on SL things computer and accessories needed buying a new a/c for the room I work from furniture List is endless so long as your tax laws allow such deductions and you can prove you use it solely for income from carrying out a certain business. By doing this it is quite easy to get a $0 tax bill. That said, what some companies do like Apple, Google, Amazon etc. is have all their money transferred to a country whereby their tax rate is lower than their own country meaning they pay the bare minimum tax within their own country or nothing at all. That is wrong and is been looked at by all goverments to try and stop. Is also why it surprised me to see Tilia being a UK company and not USA unless I read it wrong.

Mesh does not load any slower than any other object and if texturing is done right with a UV map it is far quicker as it is only one texture for all faces of the object. Either it us using a different 1024 texture on all sides of the object or texture thrashing. If your hair is old prim hair or sculpts and has the usual hair texture with alpha at the tips, more than likely they use the older alpha blending. Try editing them if possible and change the texture alpha to alpha masking set at about 90 and adjust from there. As to other older objects 9/10 times they will have an attachment point cube on them with a 512 texture on that specific prim alone. If this is the case and its mod change that to either a plain white 16x16 texture or lower or even the 16x16 transparency texture everyone should have and then change it to alpha masking set to its max. It is also sometimes possible to remove these cubes at attachment points entirely, or link multiple objects together on the same attachment point and remove the cubes from all but 1. Note however sometimes the textures on these cubes are necessary due to the script the creator uses and this is seen a lot of the time with furry heads or the like where textures need to flicker to create blinking etc. and therefore these textures wont be able to be removed. To reduce render weight even further turn off full bright on objects as well as glow if they aren't necessary which generally they aren't. If your body is split into sections like the aesthetic body or I think signature and you are wearing full pants covering the entire lower body, don't wear the lower body and save the outfit as such. Sometimes it isn't the best to wear the entire mesh body and rely on its alpha only.

True and this was a huge area of negligence on Lab for not realising (when it was pretty obvious) that even whilst told many times their system body needed to be improved they never did improve it at the most practical of times, when mesh was introduced. This decision or lack of one resulted in (rather than a mesh body market for the more out there robot or furry avatars) human avatars making the default body pointless. This further meant that rather than being able to work on another project, Lab are now looking at how to re-introduce BoM onto new mesh bodies, when if they had just updated the system body it wouldn't have been necessary or would have been a side project rather than main. That said, and whilst I assume it wouldn't be easy, I wish Lab would look into this further to solve the multi body clothing issue once and for all. Personally, whilst it wouldn't be easy to implement I think the best way Labs could handle this situation is to create another skeleton identical to the current skeleton, however with a lot more customisation and offset distance and use this as a clothing skeleton. This would mean that people can use fitted mesh clothing on the designated clothing skeleton independently from a fitted mesh body which would be on the body skeleton. Chances of this happening is zilch and if it did it would probably take a couple of years based on their other projects to introduce, but one can dream. As far as animesh goes, yes it might look DOA at the moment but I think it will improve. Despite the impact it has, if people learn to build correctly and resourcefully and save land impact from the main structures then 20LI per animesh npc would be nothing. One of the sims I created (now closed) with a friend out of all mesh had a multi level sci-fi sim wide city, with apartments, shopping mall etc. with a lot of all the usual city clutter assets and full materials in the air that only took up 3000 LI and a forest below that took up 1500LI. This all when 15k LI limit was still in place for full regions meaning 10500LI remaining. I could have had 50 100LI animesh NPC's or objects and still have 5500LI to spare. It would also be the same, I dare say, for Penny Patton's resourceful and well optimized building on her parcel. People need to either learn to build/mesh properly or stop thinking they can just build a large space using assets bought on the MP from people who don't care about optimisation. Harsh maybe but as they say the proof is in the pudding.

Tell that to the Movie Studio's who have had this very issue from the get go. The question would also be what is considered sufficient proof. It took the Movie Studios years of PI work to record enough data to even go to court for one. And even then they sued the ISP's not the people accessing the internet. If you DJ professionally or want to it is better to be safe than sorry, but SL users would be a small fish.

You are missing the point entirely. No matter who they go to, if it ends with a company needing to give your details out they still need a Court order or DMCA Filed. Sure the shoutcast company may send the DMCA to your service provider and your service provider may send that to you but that is where it ends unless a court order is provided to the isp to hand over your details. If this is not the case in EU and anyone can get your personal details from any company you use as a service etc., then I am glad I don't live there. This is the very reason DMCA notices exist, for the use, streaming or hosting of copyright material. It is also the reason why no music publisher directly sues infringers on YouTube or Twitch which by definition are also stream hosting. A DMCA is filed with the streaming company whereby they have the right to take action. They either remove the offending material, ban the person or even just pass on the DMCA to the infringer making it his responsibility. As far as I am aware no one in SL has had any action taken against them for this from Labs or any stream host.

I think the very response from BMI mentioned in this thread speaks volumes. They have no clue how Second Life runs therefore highly doubt they are interested in what would mostly be defined as hobby DJ's. Companies go after companies not individuals in cases like these as there is no money to recoup when a DJ in SL would barely in most cases make $10 a night in donations (not a wage). It is the very same reason Movie Studios have had so much trouble getting Piracy to stop and are going after the ISP's and not the individual customers. Yes it probably is illegal, however if anything was to come about from this anyway, given the anonymous nature of SL they would still need to go through Linden Lab to get the details of the person, by which they would need a court order to do so due to privacy laws. If they were to send a DMCA Notice it would be to Linden Lab who, by their discretion, would simply need to either ban the user or insist they stop doing it. Exactly the same way all this is handled on YouTube and Twitch the streaming of the music takes place but the recordings are either removed or the copyrighted parts removed. Worst case would be they sue Linden Lab but I highly doubt that will ever happen. This is probably the reason why "DJ's" in SL have been able to get away with it and why Linden Lab have been mute on the subject apart from Live Performances. My 2 cents and probably in the end worth nothing.

My point would still stand in this situation though. Let me rephrase. If I played music for a party I was hosting with complete strangers in my backyard from a CD and it was loud enough for the neighbours to hear would that still be liable? As to Reba's question it would depend in my opinion. If the DJ is simply playing pre-recorded music he/she isn't a performer. If the DJ is streaming live music as part of his gig he is still a DJ. If the DJ is mixing his own beats he is a performer. No idea why a DJ would play live music anyway when the people can just go to the actual live event/stream.

I never got this streaming copyright thing. I can understand if it is done on a platform like youtube or twitch where the video's and the songs are there forever, but never can understand why it would be in issue if it is a once off event not recorded like DJ'ing etc in SL. It's akin to me throwing a party inviting completely random strangers over to my house for it and playing a CD. Am I liable for a copyright lawsuit then?

Tell that to the many lindens/USD users make and USD Linden Lab make from people buying land on the mainland near Blake Sea. Some land there sells in the $1000's of USD. Yes, that is exactly what I am saying. It has always been and will always be Labs' policy "Your world, Your imagination". That is the very reason why you don't see Labs making any effort to build on mainland other than what they did many moons ago in the beginning with moles.

Oh, I understand, been there done that, but no one is stopping creators creating things in sl. Labs needs to make a profit just like any other company. It is also why they are trying to break the reliance of their profits on tier, hence all the premium changes etc. But until they can do that it is what it is.

To each their own, you have your opinion others have theirs. There have been plenty of other sims or regions that have been used to promote Second Life that have long gone. What makes this sim any more special than those? As far as your mainland comment goes, was good promotion previously. However one could also argue that it was the creation of private regions that destroyed Mainland. You blame Labs for mainland being like it is, whereby Linden Lab have always said "Your world, Your imagination" they don't do the building in SL they provide the service for the residents to do the building. If you think it is so ugly do something about it, buy land there and start transforming it yourself. Though I know what the response will be … oh but its so ugly. I have to have neighbours etc. Why doesn't the owner of this sim transfer it all over to mainland and start a trend in making the area good again and the place to be. Certainly would be cheaper for the owner to run the place on mainland than on a private region. Group land discount, cheaper tier etc.

Who is killing off sims? You cannot blame Linden Lab for the closing of a sim like HL. Sure having the rentals removed sucks, but it is up to the sim owner to know what can and cant happen TOS wise as well as find alternative revenue streams to support the sim. As far as mainland and Bellisaria goes, both are entirely different beasts. Bellisaria is a Lab created area to support Premium members or new comers to SL. Mainland is entirely user created. Sure Lab were stupid to let the land abandoning get so out of hand that they can never catch up with land auctions, but suggesting mainland needs to go to support 1 individual's creation is arrogant to say the least.

That is not how preservation works in SL. If the current owner wants to continue to maintain it then I would dare say they do so without preservation and Linden Lab help. You cant have it both ways. What you are essentially asking is for Linden Lab to pay all tier and still allow the person to in essence run the sims/region. If this is what they are looking for then I would suggest either funding by donations in world, pateron or the like. If Linden Lab did something like this it would set an unfair precedent whereby, any old 'pretty' sim could claim charity from Lab.

Pretty much and is why preservation is a moot point for me, its also why the sim is largely empty as its draw appeal isn't there. When it was working it was scripting genius at its finest. Wish they would just go through and redo the scripts to work again.

As far as I am aware the eco-system stopped working after Linden Lab changed scripting to Mono or something like that. Not because it was frozen in time, just never updated to comply with changes to the scripting engine.

and then will come to the forums, see all the misinformation etc. and be even more confused and panicked resulting in round two of Tilia threads.

Perhaps, however if you make it clear what the intentions are from the start it would certainly alleviate most of the issues. As far as Lab announcements go, generally they are as clear as mud and always have been. The problem with this whole announcement is that the official Tilia thread answers where written badly or in some cases not at all. There are still questions that are yet to be answered even though Lindens have been posting in the thread and have held a town hall. Whilst they may be oblivious to the questions (highly doubtful), you would think that they would have assigned a Linden to specifically answer ALL questions irrespective if they were repeats. A simple copy and past of "this has already been answered refer to the OP" would have sufficed. Instead they deleted the questions causing more confusion and angst. You would also have thought that they would have written all the questions in the forums down to address them in the Town Hall but apparently not. Instead they confuse the situation entirely speaking of two accounts but only one account to login to and then change account in the town hall to bank account, further compounding the issues. Considering the repeated questions that have still gone unanswered it is starting to look more of Linden Lab dancing around the main issues arrogantly rather than just an oversight. Additionally, whoever wrote the official blog post should never have that duty assigned to them again. Looking over the blog again it contradicts the answers given in the official Q&A thread quite a lot and simply was baiting a PR nightmare for them.

Unfortunately, no such support ticket option exists for a general enquiry that I could find. Though seems like the dashboard is broken at the moment as it states that the last time I "processed credit" was in 2013 which would be about right, but for some reason also lists the same transaction as being made in 2007 lol. I assume 2013 is well before Tilia, as people have mentioned it being implemented 3 years ago. Hopefully this is the case and means I don't have an account.

Not like they are now though. Should have phrase what I wrote better by adding good.

I have withdrawn years ago, but didn't have any indication that a separate account had been created. So if this is the case and one was created without my permission, not only is it wrong but if it will mean me having a TOS popup for Tilia I wont be accepting now that it is being labeled a Bank Account. Already have enough of those in my own country. Certainly don't need one in the USA to complicate things.

Lets see, no private regions, bugs galore, downgrades to premium and lag... Pass. Only good thing maybe that came out of 2006 SL was the media attention that allowed SL to grow more.

Probably. I forgot about the premium group saga a few weeks ago. Now all they need to do with this Tilia nonsense is confirm when these now named "Bank Accounts" will be created. If they are created automatically for every resident irrespectively of agreement to the TOS, of which I would assume to be illegal, then it opens up a whole new can of worms. Unless I am interpreting Labs' responses and info incorrectly and there is no new account created and they mean just our SL accounts.